After my 18-year-old sister-in-law whittled her college application wish list down to 20 schools, the first thing she did was log onto Instagram. Sure, she was interested in professors, courses, and academic rankings but, as someone who’d never been on her own for more than a few days, she was just as concerned with college life. Were her choices party schools, sports schools, or artsy schools? Were they on a mountain, near the beach, or in a valley? Did the students look happy, was the population diverse, and was everyone “super cute?”

To produce this article, I looked for schools that were a) creating beautiful photo or video content, b) using social media in new and interesting ways, and c) posting a diverse array of content (including links, memes, and GIFs). I asked social media experts to nominate colleges and universities, relied on published social media case studies, and did some old-fashioned digging. This list is subjective, incomplete, and totally updateable. I encourage you to log into the comments section and nominate your favorite school.

1
Marquette University

Marquette University operates more than 75 social profiles, including 44 Twitter accounts, 24 Facebook accounts, and five Instagram accounts. The Milwaukee-based school works with Sprout Social to analyze and study data to determine exactly what students and potential applicants like, dislike, and ignore on social media. The result, based on what they post, is a heavy reliance snapshot of student life. Sure, you’ll see photos of the school’s mascot, The Golden Eagle, and images from basketball games, but the majority of what Marquette posts focuses on students out in the wild. One of those 75 social profiles, @YouAreMarquette, is almost entirely user-generated, and is (based on what I’ve seen) the best no-frills record of what you’ll find walking around a major American college campus.

2
University of Georgia

To appreciate the University of Georgia’s (UGA) social media content, you’re going to need to love Bulldogs. If you don’t love bulldogs, well, then what’s your deal? Perhaps no other major university account toes the line between football insanity and higher education better than UGA.

Nestled between adorable photos of Uga, the school’s rotund, slobbery mascot, and 6-second Georgia Bulldogs football highlight videos, you’ll find links to stellar research on a wide variety of topics, including plastic waste, STEM-based instruction, and cell therapies for chronic diseases. If you’re not into football or bulldogs (God forbid), then stay away from their accounts on Saturdays when it’s all Dawgs, all day.

Last year, UGA changed logos—a no-no in the tradition-rich realm occupied by southern football universities—and worked with Synthesio to monitor the community’s response in real time. Luckily, the response was positive and Uga was permanently outfitted with fresh new gear.

3
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Want to make yourself smarter? Follow MIT on Facebook and Twitter. In addition to posting link after link of stunning new research (e.g., “Gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger"), MIT’s social feeds know how to have fun. On MIT’s feeds, you’ll find informative (and comprehensible) GIFs, LEGO caricatures of recent Nobel Prize winners, and copious amounts of robots.

As you’d expect, MIT’s feeds don’t rely as heavily on sports-related content as what you might find on other college-related social feeds. But you’ll still see a nice blend of men’s and women’s athletics coverage, including co-ed club sports such as Shotokan Karate. If you like following PCMag (and our sister sites Geek.com and ExtremeTech, then you’ll love following MIT.

4
New York University

Call me biased but this New York City boy is partial to NYU’s Instagram account. Perhaps the biggest draw for NYU applicants is the Big Apple; NYU’s Instagram page doubles down on its home field advantage by serving as a repository of gorgeous cityscapes. Seriously, if you’re missing New York City right now, pop over to the school’s Instagram page, click on a few photos, close your eyes, and I bet you’ll be able to smell a Coney Island red hot.

NYU’s Facebook and SnapChat pages are more traditional, relying heavily on life of a student-style content, fundraising efforts, and school-related news. Photographer Kate Lord, Multimedia Content Producer, is responsible for the images, and Eileen Reynolds, Assistant Director of Social Media, is the wordsmith behind the hashtags. That’s right: The accounts are managed by a two-woman team.

5
Purdue University

Selfies don't have to be selfish. Purdue University raised more than $28 million in one day thanks to a social media-driven event called "Purdue Day of Giving." A land-grant public university, Purdue relies heavily on donations to provide tuition assistance for scholarship students, research initiatives, and service learning programs, such as the Priority 4 Paws Mobile Care Unit, which sends veterinary students around the state of Indiana to animal shelters to provide medical care for strays. During the annual fundraising initiative, Purdue and HootSuite ran several activities across Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, and Twitter, including a scavenger hunt and a creative selfie competition. The school created and monitored two hashtags, #IGave and #PurdueDayofGiving, to promote awareness for the event and to engage with the community in order to maintain momentum.

In addition to the whopping sum of money the event raised, Purdue students generated more than 9,000 pieces of content and the school accrued more than 34 million social media impressions. The school doesn’t only use its social channels to give back to its local community—it runs an annual “Boilermaker Wish” campaign, it ran a #BoilerUp4Houston clothing and canned food drive after Hurricane Harvey, and it promotes the Purdue Peace Project, a university-based global political violence prevention initiative. For this, Purdue is deserving of its #1 ranking in this roundup.

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